Prof publishes book about “Olympics of pop songs”

For Prof. Karen Fricker, studying theatre and performance doesn’t just mean watching and thinking about plays. For nearly the last decade, it has also meant attending “Europe’s favourite TV show.”

Fricker, assistant professor of dramatic arts at Brock, spent a week last May in Malmö, Sweden, where she launched her co-edited book Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics at the Eurovision Song Contest, at the heart of the annual pop song festival, which is watched by an estimated 170 million people globally.

“While Eurovision music is often critiqued as out-of-date and market-unfriendly as live entertainment broadcasting, the contest is state-of-the-art, and it’s fascinating to see what innovations are experimented with each year,” she adds.